And Infantile Muscle Atrophy is an example of this unconditional love…how? Natural disasters which leave children in excruciating pain are proof of his love? Hell, old people who can’t help shitting themselves–that’s unconditional love?
You are confusing God with physical life, God does love under all conditions, but He doesn’t create the conditions. Man creates his own life by the choices he makes. Mostly these choices are not good ones. Whether you believe it or not you choose to enter the physical plane of your own free will, you choose your parents, and many other things before you are even born. It is known to you that life will not be easy in the physical before you enter. This is a school of intense learning about who you are and what you are doing here. There are some here that shouldn’t be, not ready for this yet.
Someday you will understand all that. For now you may just continue as you were.
Thank you, Oh Great Teacher.
Perhaps you can enlighten us, though. What did a crack baby do to deserve a short, pain-filled life, and what lesson has she learned by the time she dies a few weeks later?
Not to choose a crack addict for a parent.
I honestly can’t think of a response to this that can be posted outside of The BBQ Pit.
As well as Spong, I like the daily readings at www.christianagnostic.com. I find them far more believable than sermon-screeds.
Now we are venturing into completely different territory of spiritual belief, one that actually makes more sense to me than traditional religions. Not that I necessarily believe it, just that there’s a little more believable logic underlying it.
But that’s a different thread…
I fear you’re going right over my head. If you mean to say that “science” is incapable of disproving an infinite number of possibilities over the course of infinite time in infinite space, well… I’m not going to argue with that. I’ve seen enough sci-fi to know there’s an alternate dimension out there somewhere that mirrors this existence in every way other than the slight difference that I’m wearing sandals in place of sneakers.
I’d really like to understand your viewpoint on this. I view myself as a “weak atheist” in that I cannot explicitly deny the possibility of a particular god, but see no reason for any of them to exist at all. As a philosophical lark, I can critically examine a particular implementation of “god” as part of a thought experiment in which I work through whether or not reality as I perceive it seems to jive with the specifics of that god. The “problem of evil” is a classic example of this. Gods being notoriously slippery, this is fun, but not particularly informative. No sooner have you logically squished a god than one of his adherents suggests an alternate interpretation to pull the philosophical rug right out from under you.
The thing that really sticks in my craw is the assertion that you’ve chosen not to believe. It might have been Carl Sagan who invented the FSM with his invisible, incorporeal dragon who lived in the garage and projected columns of invisible heatless flame. For the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone could claim that they were “choosing” to disbelieve the dragon. The atemporal potentialities (this is a neat way to say it, btw) for which I lack belief are quite literally infinite. Were I to sit down with the intention of explicitly enumerating and disbelieving each in turn I’d never get to them all. Call me lazy, but I just can’t be bothered to consider Everything. If it isn’t particularly relevant to my little corner of spacetime, I just don’t believe in it. Mind you, that’s not to say I disbelieve it. If you wonder why I’ve devoted so much time to the topic of this particular God, it’s only because he’s culturally relevant in my tiny fraction of Everything at this particular moment. Please don’t doubt my earnestness when I ask this, but have chosen to disbelieve Thor? Sure, he isn’t particularly relevant at the moment, but a lot of people used to believe in Him and He might still be kicking around somewhere. What about gods so buried by antiquity we don’t even know their names. Do you disbelieve them, or simply lack belief in them?
I think perhaps the ever-muddy water of atheism (“weak”, “strong”, or unqualified) vs. agnosticism lies at the heart of what I perceive as our disagreement. I’ll agree that a certain amount of “faith” is required to assert the position that no god of any sort is possible anywhere, ever. I term this “strong” atheism. For any number of reasons, this view is untenable.
However, I feel that I’m perfectly entitled to withhold belief from, or maintain skepticism of, any particular entity which demonstrates a marked tendency to not exist in my perception of things. Further, I feel this is quite a bit more reasonable than asserting the existence of any such entity without giving equal consideration to all other such entities. I mean, at least my lack of belief is consistent. I have yet to hear a compelling rationale as to why belief in one particular god to the exclusion of all others is reasonable. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but:
…anyways, I’m probably spiraling. Good stuff. Thanks for your thoughts. 
But you gotta admit, you never saw that coming. I have asked variants of that question many times, but in my experience that is a unique explication. And I’m talking about the unique that means “only.”
A probable reason you don’t hear it more often is it’s a completly irrational answer; if babies could rationally weigh the options and choose their parents, then crack addicts would never have babies. Crack addicts do have babies, so babies don’t get to choose, period. Ergo, the answer is entirely devoid of any truth or content other than a spectacular lack of sympathy for the suffering of infants, as demonstrated in part by blaming them for being born.
An amazing comment from a purported worshipper of a god of love, really. I attribute it to the effects of religion on a person.
Yes, it is a different path than religion, but a common one found among spiritual experiencers. Very logical and clear and simple. I will look forward to that thread.
I lay no claim to originality, it is a common knowledge.
I have no religion, and you are not a child when you choose to enter the material world. I would show some links, but they would be off topic. Check “pre-birth experiences.”
Mm-hmm. And the fact that no non-child would sign up to be a crack baby disproves those pre-birth experiences. (If those experiences indicate that the non-child has any choice as to whom its parents will be, anyway.) Welcome to “reality disagrees with you”. You might find the terrain familiar.
And you are not a member of an organized religion.
Wrong, many choose to help others coming into the physical for only minutes, or months. The alcoholic you see lying in the gutter could be a Master Teacher. Each has their own reason for what they do. Relationships no matter how brief can be great teachers.
Think with me, spirits entering the physical world can be advanced musicians, artists, teachers, healers, etc. How else could a 6 year old boy write symphonies. We experience a multitude of child prodigies in every generation.
That’s true, not a member of any religion.
I find this idea that all atheists have is the same type of faith that believers have to be disingenuous at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. If you put forth the silly premise that it’s a 50/50 crapshoot because there is supposedly only faith to guide you one way or the other, then you must logically give all other beliefs an equal opportunity, because none of them can be totally disproved according to the standards that have been presented in this thread. From Zeus to Odin to Santa Claus to leprechauns to unicorns to pixies to angels to demons to ghosts to…hell, any and all mythological creatures. This isn’t college dorm silly thinking-this is the only honest conclusion you can come to if you follow this ill-thought-out line of reasoning, that if an entity cannot be proven not to exist anywhere in or out of this universe, the only reason we have not to believe in it is faith.
This is intellectual laziness from those who don’t want to go through the trouble of actually weighing what evidence is available so far and making a decision.
If you want to propose the existence of a “god”, show me some evidence of her/his/it’s existence. Don’t give me the copout of [whiney voice]“No matter what I show you, it won’t be enough-you’re only gonna dismiss it anyway!”[/whiney voice] You want to know what isn’t enough? Nothing! If you show me nothing, it will never be enough.
But to be fair, here’s the evidence so far of their not being any gods:
- No photographs.
- No audio recordings.
- No confirmed miracles that are totally unexplainable.
- No sign of heaven.
- No sign of hell.
- No supernatural emanations that we can study.
There’s more, of course, but I’m sure you get the point. No, we cannot “prove” that your god doesn’t exist, but if you’re willing to weigh the evidence for and against the existence of such a stupendous being…
Did you read all this in a book, did you dream it, or are you making it up as you go along?
Where, Reader’s Digest? “I Am Joe’s Sperm!”
This is a view held by a large number of people, of more than one spiritual background. The details differ, but the big picture boils down to something in the reincarnation vein, and includes the belief that each spirit chooses the experience they have on earth.
It actually offers what I find to be a pretty good argument for why “bad things happen to good people”. Our usual error in considering these matters is believing that what a personality in a body perceives as “bad” is the same thing that a spirit perceives as bad. Your spirit is here to experience, and there is no value judgment on the experience. What is pain and suffering to a person in a body is merely learning and experiencing to the soul that inhabits the body. Souls do not fear pain or suffering, souls exist outside that kind of experience. In the same way, souls do not delight in the way the personality does to what we consider pleasant, positive experiences. Wealth and poverty both have lessons. Health and disease, joy and pain… all things teach, all things are experience that add to the soul.
Which makes sense to me. (Assuming I can get into the idea of spirit in the first place, which I can accept more easily than I can accept the idea of a creator, but I’m still not sure that we’re anything more than animated meat.) Spirit is eternal and cannot be harmed by things that happen to the personality and the body on earth. Think of every and any icky, evil, horrible thing you can think of. Now…how can any of those things persist in the spirit as somehting horrible beyond this existence? I’ve never thought of anything that could, I’d be impressed if you could come up with something.
It’s all just experience. Outside the earth and life in the body, Hitler and Mother Theresa are equal: they just chose different experiences on earth, and those things simply don’t carry over beyond earthly existence. Yin and yang are necessary to all things, one cannot exist without the other. One is not better than the other, together they make the whole.
Shakespeare said it perfectly:“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players” - we each choose a role to play. And because for spirit no role is “better” than another, all roles have value. Being the baby that lives and dies in weeks is an experience that has something to learn from. Living a hundred years of health and success and acclaim is another experience that teaches something. Neither is better or worse.
I know, it’s very difficult to wrap your head around if the majority of your exposure to ideas abotu spirit are the basic religious ideas we are all familiar with. But sit with it. Try to step away from your knee jerk reaction regarding “good” and “bad” and see what happens. I think you’ll find it an interesting exercise, if nothing else.
- Shakespeare wrote fiction.
- A large number of people have the same kind of idea-it’s just the details that differ? It’s the details that matter.
- Before I follow the ideas of someone else, I want to know exactly where those ideas originated. Otherwise, I’m not following the ideas-I’m following the person who’s putting the ideas forward.
- The only thing Hitler and Mother Theresa have in common is that they are both dead. This is what can be proven, all else is baseless supposition and wishful thinking. If you say there is more than this, I say show me the evidence.
I have no problem wrapping my head around ideas. I can wrap my head around ideas all day. What I can’t do is accept them just on your say so.